Tuesday, February 08, 2005

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: IBM-Sony-Toshiba processor unveiled: "Designers say their chip, code-named Cell and built from the start with the burgeoning world of rich media and broadband networks in mind, can deliver 10 times the performance over today's PC processors.
It also will not carry the same technical baggage that has made most of today's computers compatible with older PCs. That architectural divergence will challenge the current dominant paradigm of computing that Microsoft and Intel have fostered."

A key question: will Microsoft support it with Windows XP/Server 2003/Longhorn? The PAL (processor abstraction layer) in the Windows architecture is still there, so it's certainly feasible; WIndows NT used to run on MIPS, Motorola, and IBM Power PC (although never marketed as a product, IIRC) as well as Intel...